How you can play your game

Safeway involves weighting the attacking structures based on their inherent risk levels. i.e. conducting the safest attacks the most and the riskiest attacks the least.This can be adapted to increase the influence of either forwards or backs whilst keeping the decreasing percentages in order of risk. For instance, back-influenced safeway may look something like:PnG: 37%, Driving: 28%, Expansive: 22%, Creative: 13%

Inverse (I-)Safeway

PnG: 10%Driving: 20%Expansive: 30% Creative: 40%

The opposite of the safeway tactic. I-Safeway is weighted heavily towards the riskiest plays. Such a tactic would increase the variance of the results - and thus may be useful if you are an extreme underdog.Once again, forward-influenced I-Safeway may look something like: PnG: 13%, Driving: 22%, Expansive: 28%, Creative: 37%, whilst a backs-dominated I-Safeway would push expansive+creative to beyond 70%.[Clarification]: By increasing the variance of the results, it is meant that (for example), instead of having a 100% chance of losing your game by 20, you would have a 10% chance of winning by 5, and a 90% chance of losing by 40+.

Back button

PnG: 15%Driving: 24%Expansive: 35% Creative: 26%

A general back-dominated play that will get your 9-15's involved in most plays, yet still including a driving component for forwards to keep possession.

Gas-panic

PnG: 32%Driving: 21%Expansive: 15% Creative: 32%

Gas-panic combines a high percentage of high-risk plays (creative) with a high percentage of ultra-safe plays (PnG). A play of 32% represents a 10% chance of repeating the same play twice in a row, something which should probably be kept to a minimum, especially with the creative plays.

A note on kicking

Think of kicking for touch as a gain of 20-50 metres in return for a dice-roll between the locks for who will get the ball back. What percentage of your plays would you like to take this chance?Obviously you would have to be very confident in your lineout to kick 70% or more of time, as you will not get very far kicking the ball straight back to the opposition every time you regain it. In saying that, if your lineout is considerably stronger than your opponents, in general, the rest of your team will be aswell and this raises the point that you may be better off with running one expansive play.A high kicking game is recommended when the relative difference between your and your opponent's lineout (locks, lifters, etc.) is greater than the difference between the remaining players (the backs, for instance). Obviously this is not exactly easy to determine, but the key point is that kicking (and your other tactics) should be based around the strengths of your team, the positions where your key players play, and theweaknesses of your opponent. There is no one size fits all level for kicking and tactics.If in doubt, a kick for touch level of around 30-35% will provide enough in-game feedback and insight for you to determine if this level as appropriate for your lineout and opponent.